


If you were coming in the Fall

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, American Civil War, Angst, F/M, Lust, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-05 21:25:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10317290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: There has been a certain clamoring on Tumblr for some Emmry that is a little less...demure. Though they are not my preferred pairing, I couldn't help but oblige. In order to ratchet up the heat, I chose to take *that* scene and prevent Henry from hulking out and being all murder-y and just let nature take its course. I thought there was more appeal there that a scene of married intimacy.The title is from Emily Dickinson though I don't suppose she could ever have imagined it used as I have. I am purposely invoking Eden and...innunendo :)





	

Afterwards, Henry could not help wishing they had been interrupted, though he knew that the circumstances meant such an interruption might have cost them their lives. The moon was bright and any Reb worth his salt could have picked them off with a rifle. This is what he told himself but he thought what he really wished for was the impulse to make such a wish, for some regret to accompany their fall, headlong and impetuous and ecstatic, from virtue. He had not had such a feeling the moment he said her name Emma and knew it meant darling, since he had touched a strand of her loosened hair and imagined it wrapped around his wrist, since he had kissed her mouth. She had not merely acquiesced. Her arms were around him, her slender hands, so much more capable than he had given her credit for, were on his face, holding him to her, stroking across his cheekbones. She stood on tip-toe to reach him and he had stumbled a bit until there was a tree behind him; a dryad would have blushed to have seen them.

He had dallied with girls before, behind barns and walking through the fields, even once stealing a kiss goodnight but none of it had any relevance to what it felt like to embrace Emma. Emma! He’d never thought chastity was an onerous task and now he knew he had done his parishioners and fellow seminarians a disservice when he shrugged or exhorted them to simply follow their better natures. He discovered his own nature was something foreign to him, an animal he had never encountered before, lithe and urgent, his hands made to curve along Emma’s throat, tangle in her tumbled hair. There was nothing clumsy about him, nor careful and the only fear he felt was that he would not get more of this, her taste in his mouth, the fragrance of her sweat, the fading of the rosewater he’d noticed when they sat like brother and sister in the wagon, her hips pressed against him, the cry she made into his mouth, into the night _Henry, love! Oh!_

He remembered enough not to tear her dress, though the buttons between her breasts made him murderous. Still, she drew back only enough to help him, gasping when he bent to kiss her, his hands finding the shape of her deliciously round bottom through her skirts. His braces were down, his own shirt untucked, gaping when between the two of them, they could no longer stand. He made some apology about a bed, the night, but she was fierce denying it _Don’t you say it, don’t you stop, I want--_ and he had kissed her again at her command that was also her plea. There was the raw perfume of crushed leaves around them, the coolness of them against her fair skin, but everything was heat where she touched him. It was dark enough color had left them except behind his eyes; he saw her blue eyes as grey and her beautiful autumn hair black. He could not tell how rosy her mouth was or her nipples before he kissed them. She arched into him then and the tone when she said his name Henry was of revelation and joy. He remained enough himself to ask _May I, my darling girl, oh may I please?_ and to wait the infinite second until she answered _Yes, love_ , but then his hands were pushing her skirt and petticoats to her waist, parting her thighs and managing to get enough of his own clothes pulled aside so he might press against her with his cock, hard since he had first felt her hand at his cheek. What within him knew this moment he couldn’t say, but it was what told him to murmur in her ear _Sweet, so sweet_ and to stroke his finger gently along her cleft, to feel her slick and swollen and to find his way slowly, deeply within her. Emma was the one who clung, whose hands at his lower back pulled him to her, joining them exquisitely, making sure he knew his desire was hers. _Isn’t there more?_ she whispered, his Eve, and he struggled to satisfy them both, to find what she wanted and how quickly while the sensation drugged him. He shifted and she hooked her leg over his and moaned, the most wanton sound he’d ever heard, until she said _Henry, more_ and he moved in her, heedless of anything except pleasing her and finding the delight that was just beyond his grasp, only to be attained by moving, stroking her and feeling her shudder around him, her voice a little slurred, adoring, imploring him _Come now, love_ , panting until he spent and let himself collapse upon her, his face at her neck, a hand at her waist.

All he heard was his heartbeat, like the storm’s thunder over water. His breath followed and then the soft sound of her fingers tracing the tendon at his neck, the line of his damp shoulder. He shifted and managed to take his weight from her, the scent of their love-making heady, the significance of it incontrovertible. He was familiar enough with the hospital and the losses they’d seen that day to somehow, somewhere inside his head note he did not smell blood and he was only thankful for that. He waited to say anything, hoping there would be some perfect words to tell her. When he couldn’t wait any longer and she shouldn’t, he spoke.

“I’ll marry you.”

It was not quiet around them. The woods were full of noises, rustling and flutters, sounds that did not bear considering, a dove’s errant coo. He could still hear how Emma caught her breath and how the leaf beside her cheek crumpled as she turned her face away.

“Yes,” she said. 

It was an answer, an acknowledgment. It meant he had failed and he might have ruined everything. It meant she would be his wife but she might not be his love, not any longer. However hard it would be to ask her father for her hand, to sit at the table with her mother’s eyes appraising him and her sister’s as well, Belinda impassive and implacable at the door, would be nothing to making her understand what he regretted—how he had said it but not why, what it should mean and what it didn’t, what he hoped for and what he would accept. There would be no one to ask for advice, not even God, and if she said very little to him, even when he told her _Your eyes say it every time you look at me_ , he would have to wait and pray and show her how much he loved her and wanted her, as his wife, his friend, his truest companion, his beautiful lover and even the modest mother of his children should they be so blessed. He would have to trust there was a way to let her know how much this night was not a beginning and not an end, only one pearl in a string he would hang about her slender neck.

**Author's Note:**

> There has been a certain clamoring on Tumblr for some Emmry that is a little less...demure. Though they are not my preferred pairing, I couldn't help but oblige. In order to ratchet up the heat, I chose to take *that* scene and prevent Henry from hulking out and being all murder-y and just let nature take its course. I thought there was more appeal there that a scene of married intimacy.
> 
>  
> 
> The title is from Emily Dickinson though I don't suppose she could ever have imagined it used as I have. I am purposely invoking Eden and...innunendo :)


End file.
